Bumi shares are battered by ongoing boardroom brawl

Once again, the circular firing squad at coal miner Bumi has unleashed a mutually damaging volley.

First, Bumi said it could not publish a long-awaited report by law firm Macfarlanes into financial irregularities at subsidiary Bumi Resources. It blamed a lack of witness cooperation, but also the refusal by Bumi co-founder Nat Rothschild to unmask the whistleblower who handed over the key evidence.

Bumi warned his stance meant there was ‘no credible explanation’ except that the evidence was obtained ‘illegally by email hacking’ and could not therefore be published legally.

Going up in smoke: The circular firing squad at coal miner Bumi has unleashed a mutually damaging volley

Rothschild hit back. He accused the Bumi board of being more interested in ‘settling personal scores’ with him than in finding out what happened to the ‘embezzlement’ of £630m of shareholders’ money.

The billionaire financier said any ‘malfeasance’ had taken place under the nose of chairman Samin Tan, who he maintains operates in tandem with Indonesia’s Bakrie family.

The Indonesian political dynasty co-founded Bumi with Rothschild, but the two sides have been in open warfare over corporate governance.

Rothschild asked why the investigation into Bumi Resources had hit a wall under Tan. Bumi’s comments, he said, show ‘that it [the Macfarlanes report] was unable to access key information relating to the Bakrie-controlled Bumi Resources’.

This, he said, disproved the Bakries’ statement saying they had cooperated fully with the probe.

There is one thing that all sides agree on, namely that the Bakries should find an exit route from the company. But they have threatened to abandon any plan to unwind their shareholding unless Rothschild backs down and ditches his own plans to join the board. That threat is ‘juvenile in the extreme’ according to Rothschild.

In another side-plot, Rothschild sought to bolster his case to remove chief executive Nick von Schirnding, saying the company claimed on its website that he had accounting and legal qualifications when he did not.

Bumi is talking to the Indonesian authorities and the Serious Fraud Office about what happened at its subsidiary.